US Wants Ally’s Criticism

A negative appraisal of recent events in Iraq, most notably in Felluce (Fallujah), where the US operations there have been called "genocide," "a massacre" and "Nazi attack", has concerned many officials in Washington.

The US State Department’s third ranking official, Ambassador Marc Grossman, accepted that events in Iraq are "controversial", though he said: "This discussion should be held based on realities, interallied and in a friendly way."

Grossman continued: "We do not want to see anti-Americanism increasing in the US". He noted that both governments have a responsibility to address this issue, and are liable if they don’t. He described the "flattening of Iraq" as the hardest issue in Turkish-American and called on Turkey for co-operation.

When Grossman was asked, "Why have you not eliminated the PKK yet?" Grossman responded that they have "other priorities" in Iraq.

Chair of a pro-Turkish Group in the US House of Representatives, Florida Congressman Robert Wexler, advocated Turkey’s theses on the European Union and Cyprus and praised the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Wexler was not without criticisms however.

Bagis: We are already popular

Implying that Turkey "did not receive the message" on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Greater Middle East Project (GMEP) over the last year, Wexler criticized remarks and descriptions such as "genocide" and "state terror".

Turkey’s Washington Ambassador , Faruk Logoglu, concurs that there are some difficulties signifying the elements of global cooperation in Turkish-American relations. Logoglu expressed that one has to avoid "unnecessary polemics" and called each side to be aware of "each other’s sensitivities".

The Turkish Ambassador said: "We might be unhappy now, but we should not ignore all the aspects of the relationship and we had better focus on the essence of our relations."

One of Prime Minister Erdogan’s foreign policy advisers, Turkish Parliamentary Turkish-American Friendship Group Chair Egemen Bagis, noted as well that the government does not view what has happened in Fallujah as "genocide". When asked whether or not the government wants popularity, Bagis replied: "We do not need this. We are already popular enough".